Poor Relations

THERE was nothing to distinguish the departure of the Murmania from that of any other big liner leaving New York in October for Liverpool or Southampton. At the crowded gangways there was the usual rain of ultimate kisses, from the quayside the usual gale of speeding handkerchiefs. Ladies in blanket-coats handed over to the arrangement of their table-stewards the expensive bouquets presented by friends who, as the case might be, had been glad or sorry to see them go.

Middle-aged gentlemen, who were probably not at all conspicuous on shore, at once made their appearance in caps that they might have felt shy about wearing even during their university prime. Children in the first confusion of settling down ate more chocolates from the gift boxes lying about the cabins than they were likely to be given (or perhaps to want) for some time. Two young women with fresh complexions, short skirts, tam o' shanters, brightly colored jumpers, and big bows to their shoes were already on familiar terms with one of the junior ship's officers, and their laughter (which would soon become one of those unending oceanic accompaniments that make land so pleasant again) was already competing with the noise of the crew. Everybody boasted aloud that they fed you really well on the Murmania, and hoped silently that perhaps the sense of being imprisoned in a decaying hot-water bottle (or whatever more or less apt comparison was invented to suggest atmosphere below decks) would pass away in the fresh Atlantic breezes. Indeed it might be said, except in the case of a few ivory-faced ladies already lying back with the professional aloofness of those who are a prey to chronic headaches, that outwardly optimism was rampant.

It was not surprising, therefore, that John Touchwood, the successful romantic playwright and unsuccessful realistic novelist, should on finding himself hemmed in by such invincible cheerfulness surrender to his own pleasant fancies of home. This was one of those moments when he was able to feel that the accusation of sentimentality so persistently laid against his work by superior critics was rebutted out of the very mouth of real life. He looked round at his fellow passengers as though he would congratulate them on conforming to his later and more profitable theory of art; and if occasionally he could not help seeing a stewardess with a glance of discreet sympathy reveal to an inquirer the ship's provision for human weakness, he did not on this account feel better disposed toward morbid intrusions either upon art or life, partly because he was himself an excellent sailor and partly because after all as a realist he had unquestionably not been a success.

"Time for a shave before lunch, steward?" he inquired heartily.

"The first bugle will go in about twenty minutes, sir."

John paused for an instant at his own cabin to extract from his suitcase the particular outrage upon conventional headgear (it was a deerstalker of Lovat tweed) that he had evolved for this voyage; and presently he was sitting in the barber shop, wondering at first why anybody should be expected to buy any of the miscellaneous articles exposed for sale at such enhanced prices on every hook and in every nook of the little saloon, and soon afterward seriously considering the advantage of a pair of rope-soled shoes upon a heeling deck.

"Very natty things those, sir," said the barber. "I laid in a stock once at Gib., when we did the southern rowt. Shave you close, sir?"

"Once over, please."

"Skin tender?"

"Rather tender."

"Yes, sir. And the beard's a bit strong, sir. Shave yourself, sir?"

"Usually, but I was up rather early this morning."

"Safety razor, sir?"

"If you think such a description justifiable-yes-a safety."

"They're all the go now, and no mistake ... safety bicycles, safety matches, safety razors ... they've all come in our time ... yes, sir, just a little bit to the right-thank you, sir! Not your first crossing, I take it?"

"No, my third."

"Interesting place, America. But I am from Wandsworth myself. Hair's getting rather thin round the temples. Would you like something to brisken up the growth a bit? Another time? Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Parting on the left's it, I think?"

"No grease," said John as fiercely as he ever spoke. The barber seemed to replace the pot of brilliantine with regret.

"What would you like then?" He might have been addressing a spoilt child. "Flowers-and-honey? Eau-de-quinine? Or perhaps a friction? I've got lavingder, carnation, wallflower, vilit, lilerk...."

"Bay rum," John declared, firmly.

The barber sighed for such an unadventurous soul; and John, who could not bear to hurt even the most superficial emotions of a barber, changed his mind and threw him into a smiling bustle of gratification.

"Rather strong," John said, half apologetically; for while the friction was being administered the barber had explained in jerks how every time he went ashore in New York or Liverpool he was in the habit of searching about for some novel wash or tonic or pomade, and John did not want to make him feel that his enterprise was unappreciated.

"Strong is it? Well, that's a good fault, sir."

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"What took my fancy was the natural way it smelled."

"Yes, indeed, painfully natural," John agreed.

He stood up and confronted himself in the barber's mirror; regarding the fair, almost florid man, rather under six feet in height, with sanguine blue eyes and full, but clearly cut, lips therein reflected, he came to the comforting conclusion that he did not look his forty-two years and nine months; indeed, while his muffled whistle was shaping rather than uttering the tune of Nancy Lee, he nearly asked the barber to guess his age. However, he decided not to risk it, pulled down the lapels of his smoke-colored tweed coat, put on his deerstalker, tipped the barber sufficiently well to secure a parting caress from the brush, promised to meditate the purchase of the rope-soled shoes, and stepped jauntily in the direction of the luncheon bugle. If John Touchwood had not been a successful romantic playwright and an unsuccessful realistic novelist, he might have found in the spectacle of the first lunch of an Atlantic voyage an illustration of human madness and the destructive will of the gods. As it was, his capacity for rapidly covering the domestic offices of the brain with the crimson-ramblers of a lush idealism made him forget the base fabric so prettily if obviously concealed. As it was, he found an exhilaration in all this berserker greed, in the cries of inquisitive children, in the rumpled appearance of women whom the bugle had torn from their unpacking with the urgency of the last trump, in the acrid smell of pickles, and in the persuasive gesture with which the glistening stewards handed the potatoes while they glared angrily at one another over their shoulders. If a cynical realist had in respect of this lunch observed to John that a sow's ear was poor material for a silk purse, he would have contested the universal truth of the proverb, for at this moment he was engaged in chinking the small change of sentimentality in just such a purse.

"How jolly everybody is," he thought, swinging round to his neighbor, a gaunt woman in a kind of draggled mantilla, with an effusion of good-will that expressed itself in a request to pass her the pickled walnuts. John fancied an impulse to move away her chair when she declined his offer; but of course the chair was fixed, and the only sign of her distaste for pickles or conversation was a faint quiver, which to any one less rosy than John might have suggested abhorrence, but which struck him as merely shyness. It was now that for the first time he became aware of a sickly fragrance that was permeating the atmosphere, a fragrance that other people, too, seemed to be noticing by the way in which they were looking suspiciously at the stewards.

"Rather oppressive, some of these flowers," said John to the gaunt lady.

"I don't see any flowers at our end of the table," she replied.

And then with an emotion that was very nearly horror John realized that, though the barber was responsible, he must pay the penalty in a vicarious mortification. His first impulse was to snatch a napkin and wipe his hair; then he decided to leave the table immediately, because after all nobody could suspect him, in these as yet unvexed waters, of anything but repletion; finally, hoping that the much powdered lady opposite swathed in mauve chiffons was getting the discredit for the fragrance, he stayed where he was. Nevertheless, the exhilaration had departed; his neighbors all seemed dull folk; and congratulating himself that after this first confused lunch he might reasonably expect to be put at the captain's table in recognition of the celebrity that he could fairly claim, John took from his pocket a bundle of letters which had arrived just before he had left his hotel and busied himself with them for the rest of the meal.

His success as a romantic playwright and his failure-or, as he would have preferred to think of it in the satisfaction of fixing the guilty fragrance upon the lady in mauve chiffons, his comparative failure-as a realistic novelist had not destroyed John's passion for what he called "being practical in small matters," and it was in pursuit of this that having arranged his letters in two heaps which he mentally labeled as "business" and "pleasure" he began with the former, as a child begins (or ought to begin) his tea with the bread and butter and ends it with the plumcake. In John's case, fresh from what really might be described as a triumphant production in New York, the butter was spread so thickly that "business" was too forbidding a name for such pleasantly nutritious communications. His agent had sent him the returns of the second week; and playing to capacity in one of the largest New York theaters is nearer to a material paradise than anything outside the Mohammedan religion. Then there was an offer from one of the chief film companies to produce his romantic drama of two years ago, that wonderful riot of color and Biblical phraseology, The Fall of Babylon. They ventured to think that the cinematographer would do his imagination more justice than the theater, particularly as upon their dramatic ranch in California they now had more than a hundred real camels and eight real elephants. John chuckled at the idea of a few animals compensating for the absence of his words, but nevertheless ... the entrance of Nebuchadnezzar, yes, it should be wonderfully effective ... and the great grass-eating scene, yes, that might positively be more impressive on the films ... with one or two audiences it had trembled for a moment between the sublime and the ridiculous. It was a pity that the offer had not arrived before he was leaving New York, but no doubt he should be able to talk it over with the London representatives of the firm. Hullo here was Janet Bond writing to him ... charming woman, charming actress.... He wandered for a few minutes rather vaguely in the maze of her immense handwriting, but disentangled his comprehension at last and deciphered:

THE PARTHENON THEATRE.

Sole Proprietress: Miss Janet Bond.

October 10, 1910.

Dear Mr. Touchwood,-I wonder if you have forgotten our talk at Sir Herbert's that night? I'm so hoping not. And your scheme for a real Joan of Arc? Do think of me this winter. Your picture of the scene with Gilles de Rais-you see I followed your advice and read him up-has haunted me ever since. I can hear the horses' hoofs coming nearer and nearer and the cries of the murdered children. I'm so glad you've had a success with Lucrezia in New York. I don't think it would suit me from what I read about it. You know how particular my public is. That's why I'm so anxious to play the Maid. When will Lucrezia be produced in London, and where? There are many rumours. Do come and see me when you get back to England, and I'll tell you who I've thought of to play Gilles. I think you'll find him very intelligent. But of course everything depends on your inclination, or should I say inspiration? And then that wonderful speech to the Bishop! How does it begin? "Bishop, thou hast betrayed thy holy trust." Do be a little flattered that I've remembered that line. It needn't all be in blank verse, and I think little Truscott would be so good as the Bishop. You see how enthusiastic I am and how I believe in the idea. All good wishes.

Yours sincerely and hopefully,

Janet Bond.

John certainly was a little flattered that Miss Bond should have remembered the Maid's great speech to the Bishop of Beauvais, and the actress's enthusiasm roused in him an answering flame, so that the cruet before him began to look like the castelated walls of Orleans, and while his gaze was fixed upon the bowl of salad he began to compose Act II. Scene I-Open country. Enter Joan on horseback. From the summit of a grassy knoll she searches the horizon. So fixedly was John regarding his heroine on top of the salad that the head steward came over and asked anxiously if there was anything the matter with it. And even when John assured him that there was nothing he took it away and told one of the under-stewards to remove the caterpillar and bring a fresh bowl. Meanwhile, John had picked up the other bundle of letters and begun to read his news from home.

65 HILL ROAD,

St. John's Wood, N.W.,

October 10.

DEAR JOHN,-We have just read in the Telegraph of your great success and we are both very glad. Edith writes me that she did have a letter from you. I dare say you thought she would send it on to us but she didn't, and of course I understand you're busy only I should have liked to have had a letter ourselves. James asks me to tell you that he is probably going to do a book on the Cymbalist movement in literature. He says that the time has come to take a final survey of it. He is also writing some articles for the Fortnightly Review. We shall all be so glad to welcome you home again.

Your affectionate sister-in-law,

BEATRICE TOUCHWOOD.

"Poor Beatrice," thought John, penitently. "I ought to have sent her a line. She's a good soul. And James ... what a plucky fellow he is! Always full of schemes for books and articles. Wonderful really, to go on writing for an audience of about twenty people. And I used to grumble because my novels hadn't world-wide circulations. Poor old James ... a good fellow."

He picked up the next letter; which he found was from his other sister-in-law.

HALMA HOUSE,

198 Earl's Court Square, S.W.,

October 9.

DEAR JOHN,-Well, you've had a hit with Lucrezia, lucky man! If you sent out an Australian company, don't you think I might play lead? I quite understand that you couldn't manage it for me either in London or America, but after all you are the author and you surely have some say in the cast. I've got an understudy at the Parthenon, but I can't stand Janet. Such a selfish actress. She literally doesn't think of any one but herself. There's a chance I may get a decent part on tour with Lambton this autumn. George isn't very well, and it's been rather miserable this wet summer in the boarding house as Bertram and Viola were ill and kept away from school. I would have suggested their going down to Ambles, but Hilda was so very unpleasant when I just hinted at the idea that I preferred to keep them with me in town. Both children ask every day when you're coming home. You're quite the favourite uncle. George was delighted with your success. Poor old boy, he's had another financial disappointment, and your success was quite a consolation.

ELEANOR.

"I wish Eleanor was anywhere but on the stage," John sighed. "But she's a plucky woman. I must write her a part in my next play. Now for Hilda."

He opened his sister's letter with the most genial anticipation, because it was written from his new country house in Hampshire, that county house which he had coveted for so long and to which the now faintly increasing motion of the Murmania reminded him that he was fast returning.

AMBLES,

Wrottesford, Hants,

October 11.

My Dear John,-Just a line to congratulate you on your new success. Lots of money in it, I suppose. Dear Harold is quite well and happy at Ambles. Quite the young squire! I had a little coolness with Eleanor-entirely on her side of course, but Bertram is really such a bad influence for Harold and so I told her that I did not think you would like her to take possession of your new house before you'd had time to live in it yourself. Besides, so many children all at once would have disturbed poor Mama. Edith drove over with Frida the other day and tells me you wrote to her. I should have liked a letter, too, but you always spoil poor Edith. Poor little Frida looks very peaky. Much love from Harold who is always asking when you're coming home. Mama is very well, I'm glad to say.

Your affectionate sister,

HILDA CURTIS.

"She might have told me a little more about the house," John murmured to himself. And then he began to dream about Ambles and to plant old-fashioned flowers along its mellow red-brick garden walls. "I shall be in time to see the colouring of the woods," he thought. The Murmania answered his aspiration with a plunge, and several of the rumpled ladies rose hurriedly from table to prostrate themselves for the rest of the voyage. John opened a fourth letter from England.

THE VICARAGE,

Newton Candover, Hants,

October 7.

My Dearest John,-I was so glad to get your letter, and so glad to hear of your success. Laurence says that if he were not a vicar he should like to be a dramatic author. In fact, he's writing a play now on a Biblical subject, but he fears he will have trouble with the Bishop, as it takes a very broad view of Christianity. You know that Laurence has recently become very broad? He thinks the village people like it, but unfortunately old Mrs. Paxton-you know who I mean-the patroness of the living-is so bigoted that Laurence has had a great deal of trouble with her. I'm sorry to say that dear little Frida is looking thin. We think it's the wet summer. Nothing but rain. Ambles was looking beautiful when we drove over last week, but Harold is a little bumptious and Hilda does not seem to see his faults. Dear Mama was looking very well-better than I've seen her for ages. Frida sends such a lot of love to dearest Uncle John. She never stops talking about you. I sometimes get quite jealous for Laurence. Not really, of course, because family affection is the foundation of civil life. Laurence is out in the garden speaking to a man whose pig got into our conservatory this morning. Much love.

Your loving sister,

EDITH.

John put the letter down with a faint sigh: Edith was his favorite sister, but he often wished that she had not married a parson. Then he took up the last letter of the family packet, which was from his housekeeper in Church Row.

39 CHURCH ROW,

Hampstead, N.W.

DEAR SIR,-This is to inform you with the present that everythink is very well at your house and that Maud and Elsa is very well as it leaves me at present. We as heard nothink from Emily since she as gone down to Hambles your other house, and we hope which is Maud, Elsa and myself you wont spend all your time out of London which is looking lovely at present with the leaves beginning to turn and all. With dutiful respects from Maud, Elsa and self, I am,

Your obedient servant,

MARY WORFOLK.

"Dear old Mrs. Worfolk. She's already quite jealous of Ambles ... charming trait really, for after all it means she appreciates Church Row. Upon my soul, I feel a bit jealous of Ambles myself."

John began to ponder the pleasant heights of Hampstead and to think of the pale blue October sky and of the yellow leaves shuffling and slipping along the quiet alleys in the autumn wind; to think, too, of his library window and of London spread out below in a refulgence of smoke and gold; to think of the chrysanthemums in his little garden and of the sparrows' chirping in the Virginia-creeper that would soon be all aglow like a well banked-up fire against his coming. Five delightful letters really, every one of them full of good wishes and cordial affection! The Murmania swooped forward, and there was a faint tingle of glass and cutlery. John gathered up his correspondence to go on deck and bless the Atlantic for being the pathway to home. As he rose from the table he heard a voice say:

"Yes, my dear thing, but I've never been a poor relation yet, and I don't intend to start now."

The saloon was empty except for himself and two women opposite, the climax of whose conversation had come with such a harsh fitness of comment upon the letters he had just been reading. John was angry with himself for the dint so easily made upon the romantic shield he upheld against life's onset; he felt that he had somehow been led into an ambush where all his noblest sentiments had been massacred; five bells sounded upon the empty saloon with an almost funereal gravity; and, when the two women passed out, John, notwithstanding the injured regard of his steward, sat down again and read right through the family letters from a fresh standpoint. The fact of it was that there had turned out to be very few currants in the cake, for the eating of which he had prepared himself with such well-buttered bread. Few currants? There was not a single one, unless Mrs. Worfolk's antagonism to the idea of Ambles might be considered a gritty shred of a currant. John rose at once when he had finished his letters, put them in his pocket, and followed the unconscious disturbers of his hearth on deck. He soon caught sight of them again where, arm in arm, they were pacing the sunlit starboard side and apparently enjoying the gusty southwest wind. John wondered how long it would be before he was given a suitable opportunity to make their acquaintance, and tried to regulate his promenade so that he should always meet them face to face either aft or forward, but never amidships where heavily muffled passengers reclined in critical contemplation of their fellow-travellers over the top of the last popular novel. "Some men, you know," he told himself, "would join their walk with a mere remark about the weather. They wouldn't stop to consider if their company was welcome. They'd be so serenely satisfied with themselves that they'd actually succeed ... yes, confound them ... they'd bring it off! Yet, after all, I suppose in a way that without vanity I might presume they would be rather interested to meet me. Because, of course, there's no doubt that people are interested in authors. But, it's no good ... I can't do that ... this is really one of those moments when I feel as if I was still seventeen years old ... shyness, I suppose ... yet the rest of my family aren't shy."

This took John's thoughts back to his relations, but to a much less complacent point of view of them than before that maliciously apposite remark overheard in the saloon had lighted up the group as abruptly and unbecomingly as a magnesium flash. However inconsistent he might appear, he was afraid that he should be more critical of them in future. He began to long to talk over his affairs with that girl and, looking up at this moment, he caught her eyes, which either because the weather was so gusty or because he was so ready to hang decorations round a simple fact seemed to him like calm moorland pools, deep violet-brown pools in heathery solitudes. Her complexion had the texture of a rose in November, the texture that gains a rare lucency from the grayness and moisture by which one might suppose it would be ruined. She was wearing a coat and skirt of Harris tweed of a shade of misty green, and with her slim figure and fine features she seemed at first glance not more than twenty. But John had not passed her another half-dozen times before he had decided that she was almost a woman of thirty. He looked to see if she was wearing a wedding ring and was already enough interested in her to be glad that she was not. This relief was, of course, not at all due to any vision of himself in a more intimate relationship; but merely because he was glad to find that her personality, of which he was by now more definitely aware than of her beauty (well, not beauty, but charm, and yet perhaps after all he was being too grudging in not awarding her positive beauty) would be her own. There was something distinctly romantic in this beautiful young woman of nearly thirty leading her own life unimpeded by a loud-voiced husband. Of course, the husband might have had a gentle voice, but usually this type of woman seemed a prey to bluffness and bigness, as if to display her atmosphere charms she had need of a rugged landscape for a background. He found himself glibly thinking of her as a type; but with what type could she be classified? Surely she was attracting him by being exceptional rather than typical; and John soothed his alarmed celibacy by insisting that she appealed to him with a hint of virginal wisdom which promised a perfect intercourse, if only their acquaintanceship could be achieved naturally, that is to say, without the least suggestion of an ulterior object. She had never been a poor relation yet, and she did not intend to start being one now. Of course, such a woman was still unmarried. But how had she avoided being a poor relation? What was her work? Why was she coming home to England? And who was her companion? He looked at the other woman who walked beside her with a boyish slouch, wore gold pince-nez, and had a tight mouth, not naturally tight, but one that had been tightened by driving and riding. It was absurd to walk up and down forever like this; the acquaintance must be made immediately or not at all; it would never do to hang round them waiting for an opportunity of conversation. John decided to venture a simple remark the next time he met them face to face; but when he arrived at the after end of the promenade deck they had vanished, and the embarrassing thought occurred to him that perhaps having divined his intention they had thus deliberately snubbed him. He went to the rail and leaned over to watch the water undulating past; a sudden gust caught his cap and took it out to sea. He clapped his hand too late to his head; a fragrance of carnations breathed upon the salt windy sunlight; a voice behind him, softly tremulous with laughter, murmured:

"I say, bad luck."

John commended his deerstalker to the care of all the kindly Oceanides and turned round: it was quite easy after all, and he was glad that he had not thought of deliberately letting his cap blow into the sea.

"Look, it's actually floating like a boat," she exclaimed.

"Yes, it was shaped like a boat," John said; he was thinking how absurd it was now to fancy that swiftly vanishing, utterly inappropriate piece of concave tweed should only a few seconds ago have been worn the other way round on a human head.

"But you mustn't catch cold," she added. "Haven't you another cap?"

John did possess another cap, one that just before he left England he had bought about dusk in the Burlington Arcade, one which in the velvety bloom of a July evening had seemed worthy of summer skies and seas, but which in the glare of the following day had seemed more like the shreds of barbaric attire that are brought back by travelers from exotic lands to be taken out of a glass case and shown to visitors when the conversation is flagging on Sunday afternoons in the home counties. Now if John's plays were full of fierce hues, if his novels had been sepia studies of realism which the public considered painful and the critics described as painstaking, his private life had been of a mild uniform pink, a pinkishness that recalled the chaste hospitality of the best spare bedroom. Never yet in that pink life had he let himself go to the extent of wearing a cap, which, even if worn afloat by a colored prizefighter crossing the Atlantic to defend or challenge supremacy, would have created an amused consternation, but which on the head of a well-known romantic playwright must arouse at least dismay and possibly panic. Yet this John (he had reached the point of regarding himself with objective surprise), the pinkishness of whose life, though it might be a protest against cynicism and gloom, was eternally half-way to a blush, went off to his cabin with the intention of putting on that cap. With himself for a while he argued that something must be done to imprison the smell of carnations, that a bowler hat would look absurd, that he really must not catch cold; but all the time this John knew perfectly well that what he really wanted was to give a practical demonstration of his youth. This John did not care a damn about his success as a romantic playwright, but he did care a great deal that these two young women should vote him a suitable companion for the rest of the voyage.

"Why, it's really not so bad," he assured himself, when before the mirror he tried to judge the effect. "I rather think it's better than the other one. Of course, if I had seen when I bought it that the checks were purple and not black I dare say I shouldn't have bought it-but, by Jove, I'm rather glad I didn't notice them. After all, I have a right to be a little eccentric in my costume. What the deuce does it matter to me if people do stare? Let them stare! I shall be the last of the lot to feel seasick, anyway."

John walked defiantly back to the promenade deck, and several people who had not bothered to remark the well-groomed florid man before now asked who he was, and followed his progress along the deck with the easily interested gaze of the transatlantic passenger.

For the rest of the voyage John never knew whether the attention his entrance into the saloon always evoked was due to his being the man who wore the unusual cap or to his being the man who had written The Fall of Babylon; nor, indeed, did he bother to make sure, for he was fortified during the rest of the voyage by the company of Miss Doris Hamilton and Miss Ida Merritt and thoroughly enjoyed himself.

"Now am I attributing to Miss Hamilton more discretion than she's really got?" he asked himself on the last night of the passage, a stormy night off the Irish coast, while he swayed before the mirror in the creaking cabin. John was accustomed, like most men with clear-cut profiles, to take advice from his reflection, and perhaps it was his dramatic instinct that led him usually to talk aloud to this lifelong friend. "Have I in fact been too impulsive in this friendship? Have I? That's the question. I certainly told her a lot about myself, and I think she appreciated my confidence. Yet suppose that she's just an ordinary young woman and goes gossiping all over England about meeting me? I really must remember that I'm no longer a nonentity and that, though Miss Hamilton is not a journalist, her friend is, and, what is more, confessed that the sole object of her visit to America had been to interview distinguished men with the help of Miss Hamilton. The way she spoke about her victims reminded me of the way that fellow in the smoking-saloon talked about the tarpon fishing off Florida ... famous American statesmen, financiers, and architects existed quite impersonally for her to be caught just like tarpon. Really when I come to think of it I've been at the end of Miss Merritt's rod for five days, and as with all the others the bait was Miss Hamilton."

John's mistrust in the prudence of his behavior during the voyage had been suddenly roused by the prospect of reaching Liverpool next day. The word positively exuded disillusionment; it was as anti-romantic as a notebook of Herbert Spencer. He undressed and got into his bunk; the motion of the ship and the continual opening and shutting of cabin doors all the way along the corridor kept him from sleep, and for a long time he lay awake while the delicious freedom of the seas was gradually enslaved by the sullen, prosaic, puritanical, bilious word-Liverpool. He had come down to his cabin, full of the exhilaration of a last quick stroll up and down the spray-whipped deck; he had come down from a long and pleasant talk all about himself where he and Miss Hamilton had sat in the lee of some part of a ship's furniture the name of which he did not know and did not like to ask, a long and pleasant talk, cozily wrapped in two rugs glistening faintly in the starlight with salty rime; he had come down from a successful elimination of Miss Merritt, his whole personality marinated in freedom, he might say; and now the mere thought of Liverpool was enough to disenchant him and to make him feel rather like a man who was recovering from a brilliant, a too brilliant revelation of himself provoked by champagne. He began to piece together the conversation and search for indiscretions. To begin with, he had certainly talked a great deal too much about himself; it was not dignified for a man in his position to be so prodigally frank with a young woman he had only known for five days. Suppose she had been laughing at him all the time? Suppose that even now she was laughing at him with Miss Merritt? "Good heavens, what an amount I told her," John gasped aloud. "I even told her what my real circulation was when I used to write novels, and I very nearly told her how much I made out of The Fall of Babylon, though since that really was a good deal, it wouldn't have mattered so much. And what did I say about my family? Well, perhaps that isn't so important. But how much did I tell her of my scheme for Joan of Arc? Why, she might have been my confidential secretary by the way I talked. My confidential secretary? And why not? I am entitled to a secretary-in fact my position demands a secretary. But would she accept such a post? Now don't let me be impulsive."

John began to laugh at himself for a quality in which as a matter of fact he was, if anything, deficient. He often used to chaff himself, but, of course, always without the least hint of ill-nature, which is perhaps why he usually selected imaginary characteristics for genial reproof.

"Impulsive dog," he said to himself. "Go to sleep, and don't forget that confidential secretaries afloat and confidential secretaries ashore are very different propositions. Yes, you thought you were being very clever when you bought those rope-soled shoes to keep your balance on a slippery deck, but you ought to have bought a rope-soled cap to keep your head from slipping."

This seemed to John in the easy optimism that prevails upon the borders of sleep an excellent joke, and he passed with a chuckle through the ivory gate.

The next day John behaved helpfully and politely at the Customs, and indeed continued to be helpful and polite until his companions of the voyage were established in a taxi at Euston. He had carefully written down the Hamiltons' address with a view to calling on them one day, but even while he was writing the number of the square in Chelsea he was thinking about Ambles and trying to decide whether he should make a dash across London to Waterloo on the chance of catching the 9:05 P.M. or spend the night at his house in Church Row.

"I think perhaps I'd better stay in town to-night," he said. "Good-by. Most delightful trip across-see you both again soon, I hope. You don't advise me to try for the 9:05?" he asked once more, anxiously.

Miss Hamilton laughed from the depths of the taxi; when she laughed, for the briefest moment John felt an Atlantic breeze sweep through the railway station.

"I recommend a good night's rest," she said.

So John's last thought of her was of a nice practical young woman; but, as he once again told himself, the idea of a secretary was absurd. Besides, did she even know shorthand?

"Do you know shorthand?" he turned round to shout as the taxi buzzed away; he did not hear her answer, if answer there was.

"Of course I can always write," he decided, and without one sigh he busied himself with securing his own taxi for Hampstead.